As many of you are aware Oracle has changed their licensing for Java 1.8 and making it a pay to play for all commercial purposes. Here's a link to the licensing announcement. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not going to pretend that I understand these licensing agreements. But Oracle and Adobe (or their lawyers I presume) do understand these and as such there are changes to note. On January 24th Adobe announced that Adobe will maintain support. via a Long-Term Support Agreement with Oracle, for Java 8 and Java 11. Thank you Adobe!

I have questions as I'm sure everyone else does. I've been asking representatives at Adobe these questions.

What does this mean for us?
ColdFusion Server runs on Java from Oracle, and as such the new Oracle license affects all of our ColdFusion servers. To this point Adobe has secured licensing from Oracle that allows all ColdFusion Server owners continue running Java. It is very important to note that you now need to download Java from Adobe and NOT Oracle. Get your Adobe Licensed Oracle Java downloads HERE!

Is the Java version from Adobe Different that the same version from Oracle?
Great Question and I asked Adobe about this. Here is the answer "Wil, installers are same but license attached to them are different and this is for both Java 8 and 11".

What about my existing ColdFusion Servers?
Another great question! There are tens of thousands (or more) ColdFusion servers running and the vast majority of them are running on Java from Oracle. I know that the CF Webtools Operations Group maintains a very large number of servers for a large number of clients. Over time we have been upgrading the Java version on the servers to keep up with the security updates from Oracle. This means that most if not all of these servers are on Oracle Java from Oracle and not from Adobe. What do we have to do to remain compliant? I really hope we do not have to visit all of these servers and replace the Java with the one from Adobe simply because there is a different license agreement attached. I have submitted this question to Adobe and I'm awaiting anxiously for the answer. What I do know is that all servers that we need to update are going to get the Adobe Licensed version of Oracle Java to stay safe.

I received an answer today from Adobe on this.

Wil, to answer your question, if the JDK/JRE were downloaded before Oracle came up with Licensing change, it should not be an issue. Otherwise we recommend using the Adobe provided download as soon as possible, although we don't see a deadline around this.

This means that all the servers that I have recently updated will need to be re-updated with the Java from Adobe that has a different license agreement.

What about my New ColdFusion Servers?
This question has a simple answer. To install a new ColdFusion Server you need to use the ColdFusion installer from Adobe which comes with an Adobe licensed version of Oracle Java. If you want to use a newer version of Oracle Java then you need to download the Adobe Licensed vision of Oracle Java from Adobe. Download Here!

Do I have to use Oracle Java?
Awesome question and the answer is yes, no, maybe. There is OpenJDK that may work just fine to run ColdFusion servers. There is also a new player in the Java game and that is Amazon. "Amazon Corretto is a no-cost, multiplatform, production-ready distribution of the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK)." Currently their version 8 is production ready and they version 11 is in the Release Candidate stage. I have run ColdFusion 11 an dColdFusion 2016 on Amazon Corretto 8 and it ran fine for the very limited testing that I did. For now there isn't official support from Adobe for these two Java versions.

As I get more information from Adobe I will provide updates above. I'm sure there will be more questions that people will want answered.

CF Webtools Developer Teams are ColdFusion experts and are ready to build your applications. We are also an Amazon Partner. Our Operations Group can build, manage, and maintain your AWS services including ColdFusion servers. We also handle migration of physical servers into AWS Cloud services. If you are looking for professional AWS management our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations at CF Webtools .

The first month of 2019 has passed and it was full of year end wrap up articles about anything and everything from 2018. Most were fluff articles on pop culture and such. What I found most interesting were the articles that quantified the past year of hacking and security breaches. According to NBC News, Hackers stole nearly half a billion personal records in 2018. There were fewer breaches, but the breaches were bigger and worse and more data than ever was stolen. Crypto-miners have improved as well and not in a good way. Previously I wrote about Cryptojacking and Hacking for Bitcoins. These are malware attacks where hackers install crypto-miners on servers they have compromised. The Crypto-miners use your CPUs to make money for themselves. Hackers have taken this malware to a new level of deviousness. The malware can now target and remove cloud security products as reported here and here.

ColdFISH is developed by Jason Delmore. Source code and license information available at coldfish.riaforge.org<cfscript>userRoles = '';sql = "SELECT roleId, roleName FROM userRole ORDER BY roleID";userRoles = queryExecute(sql);

The code causes a Java error at the queryExecute() statement. Many of us are working with Adobe to provide test cases, stack traces, and testing hot fixes in order to get this resolved as fast as possible. Until there is a fix, if your application is using cfscript based queries, you will want to hold off on the update.

CF Webtools Developer Teams are ColdFusion experts and are ready to build your applications.
We are also an Amazon Partner. Our Operations Group can build, manage, and maintain your AWS services including ColdFusion servers. We also handle migration of physical servers into AWS Cloud services. If you are looking for professional AWS management our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations at CF Webtools .

This entry was posted on February 13, 2019 at 5:10 PM by Wil Genovese.

This update includes adding support for Java 11 to ColdFusion 2018 and ColdFusion 2016. ColdFusion 11 did NOT get this update most likely due to ColdFusion 11 nearing end of life.

ColdFusion 2018: Server Auto-lockdown includes a new installer for Mac OS.

ColdFusion 2018 and ColdFusion 2016: Updated the following OEMs:

Jetty 9.4.12

ExtJS 6.6

JPedal 8.4.31

ColdFusion 2018 and ColdFusion 2016: You can use cfloop as script for arrays, lists, structs, or queries.

ColdFusion 2018: New platform support matrix for the following:

Adobe has updated more features for ColdFusion 2018 and ColdFusion 2016 including new mobile updates and Performance Monitor Updates. It's time to update your servers.

CF Webtools Developer Teams are ColdFusion experts and are ready to build your applications.
We are also an Amazon Partner. Our Operations Group can build, manage, and maintain your AWS services including ColdFusion servers. We also handle migration of physical servers into AWS Cloud services. If you are looking for professional AWS management our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations at CF Webtools .

This entry was posted on February 12, 2019 at 1:38 PM by Wil Genovese.

This is Part 3 in a short series of articles about blocking entire countries from a website. Parts one and two cover CloudFlare and CloudFront.

CF Webtools has been asked numerous times to block an entire country or countries by many clients. The issue is that there's a lot of hacker activity from certain identified countries and the client(s) does not do any business with those countries. Typically it's entire server hacking attempts, but more recently it's to use the client's shopping cart to "test" stolen credit cards. This is a very serious problem and as such clients are asking us to help them prevent this from happening. One potential solution is to block the IP addresses that these attacks are coming from. I refer to this as the Whack-A-Mole method because it's just like that arcade game. As soon as you block one IP they switch to another IP address.

We need a better solution. I looked into what we could do and how reasonable and feasible the various options are in terms of technology and cost. In my previous two articles I wrote about using CloudFlare and AWS CloudFront. In this article I'm writing about using a slightly better hammer in the Whack-A-Mole method to block entire countries. This is one of the simplest but also least effective methods.

The option many of us have traditionally done is blocking problematic IP's on a case by case basis and in extreme cases blocking entire IP ranges. I've often referred to this as the Whack-A-Mole method. It's reactive and not proactive. A real hacker would not use their own personal IP and there is no guarantee that the IP will always remain with an unscrupulous user. Normally I do not block an IP because bad stuff happened from that IP once. However, I have noticed the same IP or IP ranges launching attacks on multiple unrelated, hosted at different locations, and different client's servers. That's when I start pounding the IP with the ol' Ban Hammer! Also, blocking and entire country with this method would mean being able to know all the possible IP addresses or address blocks assigned to a particular country. This is knowable!

In the case of the country our client wants to block there are over 130 IP entries. These are in the form of CIDR IP ranges. This is the good news. The harder part here is that means there would have to be 130 plus entries manually added into IIS or a firewall. And this is for a smaller country. Larger countries, including countries that are known for hacking, have many thousands of CIDR IP ranges. But at least I can download the scripts for Apache and IIS from the SitePoint page and paste them into the respective config files.

What are the downsides to this method? First off I do not know if there would be any performance hit to IIS or Apache if we were to start entering thousands of IP restrictions. I do know that AWS restricts Network ACL's to an absolute max of 40 rules in their VPC's due to "performance issues" if more were added. We're still whacking at moles. IP assignments for countries can change thus you would need to update your static list of IP bans in your web server.

ColdFISH is developed by Jason Delmore. Source code and license information available at coldfish.riaforge.org<RequireAll> Order Allow,Deny Allow from all Deny from 5.11.40.0/21 Deny from 5.34.160.0/21 Deny from 5.43.192.0/19 Deny from 5.102.96.0/19..... Deny from 217.78.48.0/20</RequireAll>1<RequireAll>2 Order Allow,Deny3 Allow from all4 Deny from 5.11.40.0/215 Deny from 5.34.160.0/216 Deny from 5.43.192.0/197 Deny from 5.102.96.0/198.....9 Deny from 217.78.48.0/2010</RequireAll>

This is an example of how the IIS XML web.config is configured. The CIRD notation needs to be converted to IP and network mask format.

In conclusion each option; CloudFlare, CloudFront, and IP Banning, each have their benefits and costs. CloudFront was the easiest of the three to setup and if the downsides of the IP address masking isn't an issue then it is likely the most viable solution. The AWS CloudFront solution may be best if you are already on AWS and you have an understanding of AWS Solutions Architecting. Both CDN options have country restrictions (and rate limiting) that will help in preventing potential credit card scammers from misusing your shopping carts. IP Banning is simplistic, it has no additional dollar costs. But it may be a performance hit to your web server if you have a very large number of IP restrictions. You may also have to update the IP lists if IP assignments to a country change. It's also worth noting that all methods can be bypassed via proxies.

CF Webtools is an Amazon Web Services Partner. Our Operations Group can build, manage, and maintain your AWS services. We also handle migration of physical servers into AWS Cloud services. If you are looking for professional AWS management our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations at cfwebtools.com.

This entry was posted on November 29, 2018 at 2:39 PM by Wil Genovese.

This is Part 2 in a short series of articles about blocking entire countries from a website. See Part 1.

CF Webtools has been asked numerous times to block an entire country or countries by many clients. The issue is that there's a lot of hacker activity from certain identified countries and the client(s) does not do any business with those countries. Typically it's entire server hacking attempts, but more recently it's to use the client's shopping cart to "test" stolen credit cards. This is a very serious problem and as such clients are asking us to help them prevent this from happening. One potential solution is to block the IP addresses that these attacks are coming from. I refer to this as the Whack-A-Mole method because it's just like that arcade game. As soon as you block one IP they switch to another IP address.

We need a better solution. I looked into what we could do and how reasonable and feasible the various options are in terms of technology and cost. In this article I'm writing about using Amazon Web Services CloudFront to block entire countries.

Amazon AWS CloudFront
AWS CloudFront does offer country blocking. I thought this would be an easy setup, but it isn't. When I tried to setup AWS CloudFront to 'front' an entire website I found there are many pieces that needed to be in place in order for CloudFront to handle the entire website.

Route 53 is needed or any other DNS that allows an ALIAS record for the Zone Apex record. This is because the Zone Apex record (root record) will be set to the URL provided by CloudFront and not an IP address.

Elastic Load Balancing is needed. The CloudFront origin (EC2 server) needs to be behind an TCP Elastic Load balancer. If there is only one site then the ELB target can be the instance itself. If the EC2 instance hosts multiple different sites, then we need to add multiple internal IP addresses to the instance and configure the origin site to be on it's own IP. Then the ELB should be configured to that internal IP address and not instance. If you are passing host headers in the CloudFront 'Behavior' section then you can have a single IP on the web server with multiple sites per usual for virtual name hosting. You have to setup the TCP ELB as TCP port 80 passthrough in order to pass the original IP addresses to the web server.

AWS Certificate Manager is needed to create a new free SSL for the domain name being setup in CloudFront. (I say it's needed because all sites should be using TLS protocols these days.) I found a wild card certificate works well.

Then lastly AWS CloudFront itself can be setup. The settings are a bit tricky. The Origin will be the ELB which will then pass requests to the EC2 instance. If you want or need forms to be posted to the website then you need to select "GET, HEAD, OPTIONS, PUT, POST, PATCH, DELETE" option for Allowed HTTP Methods. If you need to allow logins then you have to choose "All" for Forward Cookies.

There are costs to each part. Route 53 charges by zone and number of requests. Elastic Load Balancing charges by the hour and by data transfer amounts. Then Cloud Front charges by data transfer amount.

There are downsides to this method as well. In addition to the AWS method being harder and more complex to setup there are more costs involved. I can pass the original requesting IP address through to the web server, it still comes through in the X-Forwarded-For custom header. In Apache it's easy to globally capture and place this value into log files or the CGI scope. IIS does not allow this to be done at a global level meaning each IIS site must be configured for the custom headers. Additionally, you may need to custom code the web application to read X-Forwarded-For no matter which web server you are using.

After you have all of that setup, configured, and working you can now start blocking countries. This is done in the AWS CloudFront Restrictions section. You can add a Geo-Restriction blacklist or whitelist by country.

Part 3 will cover using IIS and Apache and a slightly better hammer in the Whack-A-Mole method.

CF Webtools is an Amazon Web Services Partner. Our Operations Group can build, manage, and maintain your AWS services. We also handle migration of physical servers into AWS Cloud services. If you are looking for professional AWS management our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations at cfwebtools.com.

This entry was posted on November 29, 2018 at 1:12 PM by Wil Genovese.

CF Webtools has been asked numerous times to block an entire country or countries by many clients. The issue is that there's a lot of hacker activity from certain identified countries and the client(s) does not do any business with those countries. Typically it's entire server hacking attempts, but more recently it's to use the client's shopping cart to "test" stolen credit cards. This is a very serious problem and as such clients are asking us to help them prevent this from happening. One potential solution is to block the IP addresses that these attacks are coming from. I refer to this as the Whack-A-Mole method because it's just like that arcade game. As soon as you block one IP they switch to another IP address.

We need a better solution. I looked into what we could do and how reasonable and feasible the various options are in terms of technology and cost. In this article I'm writing about using CloudFlare CDN to block entire countries.

CloudFlare
I was not familiar with CloudFlare other than it's a CDN. They do offer advanced services for a price. There is a free tier that has CDN capability and limited Firewall features. The firewall features include the ability to setup 5 firewall rules.

To test the features and capabilities of CloudFlare I created a free account for myself and setup my blog to use CloudFlare. My blogs uptime is not critical like the client's business is and it gets real traffic thus it can be used to test various features.

Using the free firewall features I can block multiple countries in a single firewall rule. The rules allow for chaining filters with AND OR statements. See the example below.

I don't know yet if there is a limit to the number of conditions I can add to a single rule. However, at the moment it seems to be sufficient.

The negative side effect that I can see so far is that all the IP addresses that get logged on the origin web server are from CloudFlare. This defeats many clients needs/desires to have a valid IP address of their valid customers. Cloudflare does offer the option to pass through the original HTTP headers, but that is under their top Enterprise plan. They do not provide a cost for this. You need to request an estimate.

CloudFlare does pass through custom headers that has the original IP and other custom headers. However, these are not standard and web servers need to be configured to first read the custom header fields and then the application code needs to be updated to use the custom headers fields. It's far easier to do this in Apache than it is in IIS. IIS does not allow this to be done at a global level meaning each IIS site must be configured for the custom headers. Additionally, you may need to custom code the web application to read X-Forwarded-For no matter which web server you are using.

Another issue is that CloudFlare requires you move your DNS to them. Depending on the client, gaining access to their DNS and registrar can be challenging.

Part 2 will cover using AWS CloudFront to achieve the same results.

CF Webtools is here to fill your needs and solve your problems. If you have a perplexing issue with ColdFusion servers, code, connections, or if you need help upgrading your VM or patching your server (or anything else) our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations @ cfwebtools.com.

This entry was posted on November 29, 2018 at 7:58 AM by Wil Genovese.

On September 11th of 2018 Adobe released a critical security patch to patch a very dangerous flaw (CVE-2018-15961) that could allow an attacker to upload a file that can be used to exploit and take control of the server. Adobe updated their security note to alert everyone that there are active exploits in the wild.

"UPDATE: As of September 28, Adobe is aware of a report that CVE-2018-15961 is being actively exploited in the wild. The updates for ColdFusion 2018 and ColdFusion 2016 announced in this bulletin have been elevated to Priority 1. Adobe recommends customers update to the latest version as soon as possible." - Adobe

Today it is being reported by multiple news outlets including ZDNet that the exploit is in the wild and being used by a nation-state cyber-espionage group.

The attacks have been taking place since late September and have targeted ColdFusion servers that were not updated with security patches that Adobe released two weeks before, on September 11." - ZDNet

This is one more friendly reminder to make sure your ColdFusion servers are patched! Either patch them yourself, have your hosting provider patch them or if they are not familiar or knowledgeable with ColdFusion contact us at CF Webtools to patch your servers. Our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to "operations at cfwebtools.com".

This entry was posted on November 9, 2018 at 11:15 AM by Wil Genovese.

Today's short note is brought to you by "Don't Do That On Production!" At CF Webtools often times we get called in to help troubleshoot servers that are failing to perform well. We often hear the same sort of symptoms that goes like this. The server has been running fine for months then suddenly for no reason it's slow, CPU usage is high, and it hangs or crashes multiple times per day. This always prompts us to ask the same question. "What was changed just before these symptoms started?" And the answer is usually "Nothing was changed (as far as they knew)". In all reality the person we're talking to may not the be only person with access to make changes to the server. Or they may not in fact have access at all and they are relying on information provided to them by an IT team member. We take notes, assume nothing, and question everything (on the server).

We had this scenario play out a few times in the past few weeks with three servers from three different companies. The reason I'm writing this note is the same problem occurred on each server. The short answer is someone enabled ColdFusion Debugging on the production server. ColdFusion is a very powerful rapid development platform, but it has a few gotchas if you are not careful. Such as enabling debugging on a production server. Debugging output provides a massive amount of information and for obvious security reasons we never want this enabled on a production server. Yes, I know you can restrict debugging output to a certain IP address, but that does not prevent the debugging output from being generated. It's just not displayed. The generation of debugging output takes more CPU power and at times more JVM memory. On a low load web application you may not notice a difference. However, on a high load, high traffic production web application the extra resources needed to generate the debugging output may in fact cause all those symptoms described above.

In each of the cases we saw these past few weeks, we were reviewing the servers settings, looking at the results of Fusion Reactor, and reviewing ColdFusion settings. On the first server we almost missed the fact that debugging was enabled. By the time we were troubleshooting the third server with similar symptoms we were checking to see if debugging was enabled before we did anything else. Disabling debugging resolved the bulk of the performance issues. We then used this time to review each server and offered additional performance tuning recommendations based on each servers resources and application needs.

This falls into the category of "Don't Do That On Production!" Please leave debugging to your development and staging servers.

CF Webtools is here to fill your needs and solve your problems. If you have a perplexing issue with ColdFusion servers, code, connections, or if you need help upgrading your VM or patching your server (or anything else) our operations group is standing by 24/7 - give us a call at 402-408-3733, or send a note to operations @ cfwebtools.com.

What do you do while waiting for very large data transfers to complete? By large I'm talking upwards of Terabytes. My mind wanders and suddenly the theme for Rawhide gets stuck in my mind! But it's different. The music is similar, but the words have changed. It's almost like Dust Puppy was singing the song.